There is known optical disc drives, which record (overwrite) and/or reproduce information on an optical disc that is overwritable (rewritable), such as CD-RW and the like.
Such optical disc drives include: a rotational driving mechanism for rotating a loaded optical disc at any one of multiple rotational speed (rotation number) levels; an optical pick-up (optical head) which is provided movably in a radial direction with relative to the loaded optical disc for emitting a laser beam to be able to record information (data) on the disc; and an optical pick-up moving mechanism equipped with a sled motor for moving the optical pick-up in the radial direction.
The optical disc drives having such a function for recording information are sometimes formatted at a format called packet writing, for example. Such a formatted optical disc can be utilized like a floppy disk (“floppy” is a registered mark).
This format procedure for an optical disc is carried out at a recording speed (that is, writing data transfer rate) same as the highest recording speed (the highest recording speed for overwriting) in a case of carrying out overwriting procedure for an optical disc. If the highest recording speed for overwriting is decuple speed (10× speed) of the reference rotational speed (1× speed) for example, the format procedure for an optical disc is carried out at the decuple speed, whereby it takes about eight minutes to format an optical disc.
Namely, this means that the conventional optical disc drives require relatively long time for formatting an optical disc.